Investigating causal relations in language with the help of path analysis*

Abstract

The article presents the results of an experiment on the use of the method of Path analysis in identifying and measuring the causal relations in a system of linguistic objects. A survey is given of the main principles and techniques of Path analysis. The application of Path analysis to linguistic material is illustrated by a causal model exposing the dependences between four characteristics of vocabulary: the age of a word (A), frequency (F), length (L), and semantic scope or polysemy (S).